The invention relates to a bucket elevator arrangement with several adjacently arranged bucket elevator strands and with a feed device for feeding bulk material to the bucket elevator strands, wherein a common drive shaft with a respective driving motor that is attached to the associated end of the drive shaft and acts upon the drive shaft is provided for driving the bucket elevator strands.
A bucket elevator arrangement with the aforementioned characteristics is shown in the company prospectus “Bucket Elevators” of AUMUND Fördertechnik GmbH, Date of Print 2010, according to which two bucket elevator strands with buckets that are held on bucket elevator chains, preferably plate link chains, are arranged in a common housing. A drive shaft is arranged in the upper head of the double bucket elevator and set in rotation by two driving motors that are realized in the form of electric motors and arranged on both sides of the drive shaft, wherein driving wheels for respectively driving one bucket elevator strand are arranged on said drive shaft and connected thereto in a torque-proof fashion. The buckets with the assigned bucket elevator chains of each bucket elevator strand are respectively guided over a driving wheel that causes the buckets to circulate due to its rotational motion generated by the drive shaft.
Although this double bucket elevator already provides a significant conveying capacity, there is a constant demand for even higher conveying capacities in practical applications. In addition, the known bucket elevator arrangement has the disadvantage that its two bucket elevator strands respectively can only be operated jointly and uniformly such that a required standstill of one bucket elevator strand, in particular, for repair and/or maintenance purposes results in the loss of the entire conveying capacity of the double bucket elevator.